Gene Luen Yang’s already earned widespread acclaim for everything for such works asAmerican Born Chinese and writing the Avatar: The Last Airbender graphic novels for Dark Horse. His most recent work is actually two works in one, that take two perspectives on a historical event that’s often forgotten in American culture.

Boxers and Saints is a set of two graphic novels from First Second Books that examines the Boxer Rebellion of 1899-1901 from two sides in China – the “Boxers,” the rebels who sought to purge China of foreign influence, including missionaries, they felt were overtaking their culture, and the “Saints,” the Chinese who fought against the Boxers, and were later canonized by the Catholic Church.

Yang’s take on the Boxer Rebellion splits the story across two volumes from both points of view, and offers no easy answers as it examines a painful conflict and a difficult time in history from teenagers caught in its wake. It’s already earned massive acclaim, including earning Yang a second National Book Award Finalist honor, and was picked as one of the best Young Adult books of 2013 – graphic or otherwise – by the New York Times.

We called up Yang to talk about his work, the unique cultural connection between the Boxers and modern comic book fans, how the books were almost presented, and his next graphic novel, a unique take on a superhero 99.9 percent of readers have never heard about.

The Oscar shorts return

There’s an international flavor to the short films nominated for Academy Awards this year, with no American entries in live-action and only two in animation (one of which is by Disney). Though there’s a predictable quality to some of this year’s nominees, there’s also work that features more inventiveness in a brief running time than most features exhibit in two hours.

Forget Newsroom. Aaron Sorkin should go back to politics

This is an interesting moment for the playwright and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin. After months in limbo, his HBO series The Newsroom was just renewed for a third and final season. This should excite hardcore Newsroom fans, but there’s another opportunity we’d like to see him pursue—his long-promised adaptation of Andrew Young’s tell-all account of John Edwards’ downfall, The Politician.

Scioli’s Ultimate 80s Team-Up: TRANSFORMERS / G.I. JOE

We’ll be blunt: We love ‘80s cartoons. We love the insane Kirby-style riffs of writer/artist Tom Scioli (Gødland, American Barbarian). So when we found out Scioli was going to be doing a new ongoing Transformers/G.I. Joe series at IDW (co-written with John Barber) starting with a Free Comic Book Day issue that will be in stores in April, we were…enthusiastic, to say the least.

Details on the book are hush-hush and Scioli is finalizing the artwork on everything, but we got him on the line to talk about his love of these characters, from the classic toys to the classic cartoons to the classic comics.

Here now are excerpts from our long, long geek-out session with Scioli on these great characters and how they warped our childhoods, and a look at some of the behind-the-scenes drawing for the upcoming series. If anything, we did learn this: Scioli is bringing a real passion and love for the characters to this book, and you can get a glimpse of it here.

He’ll forever be known as Star Trek’s Captain Kirk, but William Shatner’s willingness to embrace his campy persona has made him more prolific than most actors a quarter of his 82 years – and he’ll explore his long, strange trip in detail in his one-man show Shatner’s World: We Just Live in It at Duke Energy Center on Jan.12, a performance Shatner says has left him “moved to tears” many times by the audience’s reaction.

Shatner began his show at the suggestion of an Australian fan, figuring “if it fails, nobody’ll know – it’s the way of the wild.” It’s become a consistently evolving beast, touring Australia, Canada and the United States, including a sojourn on Broadway. “The show, which had its original inspiration in Australia, has become inspirational to me as a result of doing it,” says Shatner in a phone call from Los Angeles.

Shatner had one of his most acclaimed projects with Chapel Hill’s Ben Folds on the 2004 album Has Been, which reinvigorated Shatner’s oft-derided musical career. “I fell in love with Ben Folds and his family – we’ve remained friends over the years and I would love to perform with him again,” says Shatner, who recently released the prog-rock album Ponder the Mystery with Billy Sherwood of Yes. “He’s a musical genius. I like him and admire him very much.”

Captain Kirk and Star Trek typecast the stage-trained Shatner for years, something he addresses in Shatner’s World. What does he make of the modern state of television, where shows are sometimes held up as superior to film or prose literature? “I absolutely agree with you – television has become a great medium, and people are looking to it for works of art as well as wide entertainment or circus entertainment. There seems to be a deepening of people’s taste, requiring artists to fulfill that yearning by coming out with things that appeal to their more fundamental tastes, rather than just on the surface. That applies to movies, television and now things like Facebook and Twitter and all those viral networks.”

We had to ask Shatner about the recent incident in North Carolina where Indian Trail Councilman David Waddell resigned in the form of a short letter written in Klingon. Shatner hadn’t heard of this prior to our interview and is somewhat baffled by Waddell’s choice: “I would think he lessens the impact by being superficial in referencing this language that doesn’t exist,” Shatner says. “If it’s a joke, is he making his resignation a joke? I would think that he would serve his purposes better by writing a well-reasoned, carefully-worded letter that spoke of his desire to do good, rather than make a joke of it and write it in Klingon.” He was more intrigued to hear noted Klingon language authority Lawrence M. Schoen will be in Raleigh for illogiCon the same weekend as him: “It brings to mind what is language, and how is language devised, and can you have subtlety in a made-up language? It’s a really interesting creative question.” He finds similar invented languages fascinating, but wonders how wide an audience they can reach: “Getting back to the guy that resigned, if he wishes to reach a large audience to express his opinion, he’s got a very limited audience of five.”

Antony Johnston lights THE FUSE at Image Comics

Antony Johnston is no stranger to scifi worlds with his long-running post-apocalpytic series Wasteland at Oni. Now, the prolific creator is headed offworld with The Fuse, a new SF series from Image Comics, where he also recently launched the fantasy Umbral.

The Fuse, which launches this February, is a crime comic with a SF twist…specifically the setting, one that hasn’t really been depicted in comics before and allows for all manner of unique stories. We got the goods on The Fuse from Johnston, along with some preview art.

In a world where it’s still a great challenge for entire comic book creative teams to get a book out on a regular basis, Michel Fiffe produced 12 issues of his offbeat, action-packed supervillain team Copra entirely on his own…and we mean, he did everything, from story to art to self-publishing outside of the Diamond system employed by almost every comic company.